The Big Dog and the King of Kings return and the viewership goes up.

What’s the story?

This week’s episode of Monday Night Raw averaged 3.031 million viewers and was up nearly 200,000 viewers from last week’s taped episode.

In case you didn’t know...

The first hour of Raw kicked off with the return of Roman Reigns with The Shield and a triple threat match between Bayley, Dana Brooke and Mickie James for the final spot on the Raw Women’s Team.

The second hour of Raw featured Jason Jordan taking on Bray Wyatt, and Brock Lesnar coming out with Paul Heyman to address his upcoming match with AJ Styles this Sunday.

The final hour or Raw saw The Shield take on The Miz, Cesaro & Sheamus, Triple H returning and replacing Jordan on the Raw Men’s Team and Braun Strowman powerslamming Kane through the ring to close the show.

The heart of the matter

Raw was up against the Monday Night Football game between the Miami Dolphins and the Carolina Panthers and six NBA games. The following is the hourly breakdown for the Nov. 13 edition of Raw:

Hour One: 3.262 Million

Hour Two: 3.061 Million

Hour Three: 2.769 Million

Raw started off with over three million viewers, but the drop from hour one to hour two saw over 100,000 people tune out. The biggest drop occurred in the third hour with 292,000 fans not sticking around for the main event between Kane and Strowman.

Despite the hour to hour drop, this Raw was the first episode to average 3 million viewers since the August 28 episode. This also marked the first time since the Raw before WrestleMania were the viewership didn’t drop before an upcoming pay-per-view.

What’s next?

Next week’s Raw will be the post-Survivor Series show and is expected to see an increase in viewership consistent with all post-pay-per-view shows.

The appearance of Reigns and Triple H, and the fact that last week’s Raw was taped, may have an effect on the expected post-Survivor Series viewership bump.

Raw will also have to contend with next week’s NFL game between the Atlanta Falcons and the Seattle Seahawks that will begin 30 minutes into Raw’s broadcast, and six NBA games - five of which will carry over into Raw’s broadcast and one that will begin at the same time as Raw.

Author’s Take

Many fans said that Raw delivered a great go-home show this week and the viewership tells that same story.